“Everyone here at the 9/11 memorial and museum feels a tremendous measure of pride and responsibility in assuming custody of this flag”, said the 9/11 Memorial Director Alice Greenwald.
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The flag surfaced two years ago in Everett, Wash. when a mystery man known only as “Brian” turned it in at a fire station. The image shows three firefighters raising the flag over the rubble.
“At first I doubted that that could possibly be true, it’s definitely such a big deal that it’s hard to imagine the Everett Police Department on the West Coast could be involved at all with having custody of the flag”, said Paxton.
NEW YORK (AP) An American flag raised at ground zero on September 11 in a defining moment of patriotic resolve took its place at the site Thursday after disappearing for over a decade.
The extraordinary finding comes after a two-year investigation spearheaded by the Everett police, with assistance from an entire cast of forensic experts in a variety of specialties.
Schneck’s analysis showed that the dust samples from the flag have the same characteristics as the ones found at Ground Zero.
“I always wanted to do something patriotic and this is as close as I’m going to get, being as patriotic as I wanted to be”, said Schneck.
Now, almost 15 years later, the flag hangs on display at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York City. But what happened in those missing years is unknown. Their insurance company reimbursed them, after the flag was taken by the firefighters on September 11, and subsequently lost.
A documentary about it airs Sunday on the History Channel.
The flag matched in size, nylon material and stitching to the one in the September 11 photo. She said the black electrical tape on the rope was the work of her late husband and she was 80 percent sure it was the same flag.
“I was like, ‘I need to go back, ‘ and that’s when I saw the three firemen; they were fumbling with the flag”, Franklin told Politico in 2011.
The two breathed a sigh of relief on August 4 when a museum curator came to the police station to collect the flag and halyard, knowing it was headed back home to Manhattan. “I still don’t lose focus on the fact that thousands of innocent people died”.
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And 15 years later – nearly to that unforgettable day – the men who found it are taking it to its rightful home. “We were never pressured to say it’s the flag”, Massingale said.
